So this's the state of 21st century mainstream psychology today, indulge your fantasies/delusions as much as you can, so long as you don't think there's any obvious, major consequences, well either that or pop a pill.This is not normal and it's not healthy.Just acquiesce to the mandates of government, the psychiatric and scientific communities, no independent thought

We've gone from tolerating minorities, which's what I'm in favor of, to allowing them to impose their language and reality upon us.When will the madness end?Unfortunately, not anytime soon, it's only going to accelerate.

The article is misleading, and it's a lot less crazy in the sex guide itself. For example, they have a section called "Safe penetrative sex in a front hole, vagina, or anus", showing that "front-hole" isn't used as a gender-neutral replacement for "vagina", but as a distinct orifice that one can engage with sexually.

And really, if you insist that post-op transsexuals aren't women, you should be all about this idea. The people cited in the article as outraged were pro-trans people who were offended that "front-hole" marginalizes and dehumanizes trans-women.

Personally, I'm most upset that every sex-related word in that article uses a special character in place of a letter (e.g. x in "sex", v in "vagina", n in "genitals"). I guess that's to make searching for it harder? Weird.

A Shieldmaiden wrote:This is a very typical error in thinking, confusing feelings with realities.

The truth is that reality is what it is, nothing more, nothing less.

Some realities are intersubjective, so that if everyone agrees that X is the case, it becomes the case. Money, language, laws, religion, they are real phenomena whose reality is entirely dependent on shared narratives. The social aspects of gender are that way too, what makes a woman a woman socially is not her genitals or her genes, it's whether or not there is intersubjective agreement that she's a woman.

Gloominary wrote:I never claimed to have seen statistics proving faxuwomen sexually exploit real women more than real women do in restrooms

also Gloominary wrote:in all likelihood, they are.

Please tell me you see the tension between acknowledging that you have no knowledge of the statistics and then immediately talking about how likely something is.

Gloominary wrote:The words man and woman don't belong to the state

I'm not talking about what the government should do about transsexuals. I'm talking about individuals dignifying other individuals' self-identity.

3) For a lot of our history, we didn't really know much about biology. No one knew anything about genes or hormones or even much about organs. So it isn't true that what you mean when you say "man" and "woman" is what people have meant by those words (or their translations) since time immemorial. The underlying concepts have shifted through history. When no one knew about genes and hormones, the concept of man and woman did not include genes and hormones. Now we have different concepts, and we're using the same words.

Ultimately you're making a linguistic argument, not an ontological one. Man means something for you that it doesn't mean for a trans-man, right? When you say "you aren't a man", and he says "I am a man", you aren't actually disagreeing. You're equivocating on the word "man". For him, the definition is mostly social, and for you it's mostly genetics and genital-shape.

On that note, as an aside, it's interesting that you keep using "doctor" and "lawyer" as inviolable, when those words too have drifted over time. Not too long ago (and in many places even now), both words had the necessary implication of maleness, and a woman who said she wanted to be a doctor or lawyer might have been accused of "fantasy role play taken to ridiculous, unprecedented lengths".

Gloominary wrote:I'd rather invent new words to describe such people

Lots of gender studies professors have tried, but that's not really how language works. Some cultures do have alternative words; Thai has several. And arguably "trans-man" and "trans-woman" are already there in English.

But I think just saying "man" instead of "trans-man" is legitimate, where 1) the distinction is irrelevant in most social interactions, and 2) we live in a society where random internet people go on unprovoked rants about how readily that will violently attack people who mislead them about the shape of their genitals.

Gloominary wrote:don't treat people according to what and who they are, treat people according to what and who they wished they were

I think it's rather that some part of who they are is defined by who they choose to be.

You keep talking about "delusion", but consider what I said above about equivocation. Drill down into what that alleged delusion entails. A transman says he's a man, you say he isn't. You say, "But you have XX chromosomes." He says yes. You say, "But you have a womb and a vagina and can get pregnant." He says yes. You say, "So you're a woman!" He says no. He says, "But I have a beard." You say yes. He says, "But I wear cargo pants and that mom got uncomfortable when I smiled at her kid." You say yes. He says, "So I'm a man!" You say no.

There's no delusion in this exchange, he's just using the word to point to a different concept.

Some realities are intersubjective, so that if everyone agrees that X is the case, it becomes the case.........

As far as I am concerned that equates to wishful thinking and that does not determine the truth, to rely on the majority to come to the conclusion because we all agree then it must be truth is less than insightful, as you also cannot deny that people are gullible.

The article is misleading, and it's a lot less crazy in the sex guide itself. For example, they have a section called "Safe penetrative sex in a front hole, vagina, or anus", showing that "front-hole" isn't used as a gender-neutral replacement for "vagina", but as a distinct orifice that one can engage with sexually.

And really, if you insist that post-op transsexuals aren't women, you should be all about this idea. The people cited in the article as outraged were pro-trans people who were offended that "front-hole" marginalizes and dehumanizes trans-women.

Personally, I'm most upset that every sex-related word in that article uses a special character in place of a letter (e.g. x in "sex", v in "vagina", n in "genitals"). I guess that's to make searching for it harder? Weird.

I have no problem with trans coming up with their own language to describe themselves, in fact, yea, I encourage them to, rather than obscuring existing language, like they're doing with man and woman.

Some realities are intersubjective, so that if everyone agrees that X is the case, it becomes the case. Money, language, laws, religion, they are real phenomena whose reality is entirely dependent on shared narratives. The social aspects of gender are that way too, what makes a woman a woman socially is not her genitals or her genes, it's whether or not there is intersubjective agreement that she's a woman.

I think you're stretching it.Money, language and so on are partly rooted in subjective things like human cognition, shared narratives and so on, but entirely?When, whatever you want to call them, social constructs are used affectively, they help put us more in tune with both ourselves, and nature, with both our needs, and how to satisfy them, but when they're used ineffectively, as is the case with trans, they obscure them.

Please tell me you see the tension between acknowledging that you have no knowledge of the statistics and then immediately talking about how likely something is.

I'm making an inference, I'm using what I'm sure of, to make a reasonable assumption about what I'm less sure of.We all make thousands of inferences a day, and while they're not as good as statistical research (or direct personal observations for that matter) when conducted properly, often they're all we have to go on.There may be no statistical research on how hermaphrodite gorillas behave in washrooms, but I'd still keep my distance from them.

1) There's been a recognition of people who don't fit in the male/female binary for thousands of years of recorded history.

I'm aware of that.But did most civilizations throughout history refer to and mostly think of trans as the opposite sex, or did they invent new linguistic and conceptual categories for them?

2) Biological sex is not binary.

Just because sex isn't wholly black and white, doesn't mean it's an amorphous blob either.I'm trying to be fair, I'm acknowledging that men and women can have physical, neurological and psychological secondary sex characteristics that don't align with their genitals and chromosomes, while also acknowledging that men and women can't be wholly one sex living in the opposite sex, which's a widespread misconception held both by many people within, and outside the trans community.

3) For a lot of our history, we didn't really know much about biology. No one knew anything about genes or hormones or even much about organs. So it isn't true that what you mean when you say "man" and "woman" is what people have meant by those words (or their translations) since time immemorial. The underlying concepts have shifted through history. When no one knew about genes and hormones, the concept of man and woman did not include genes and hormones. Now we have different concepts, and we're using the same words.

I think you underestimate premodern man.They knew enough to know peoples psychological sex mostly aligned with their physical.I think often scientists get too mired in microscopic details, and progressives in exceptions, totally missing the big macroscopic picture and rules in the process.I think if we've taken steps forward in some ways in understanding human nature and nature, we've taken steps back in others.In most ways, including our understanding, humanity may be regressing, in light of all the social, political, economic and environmental maladies we face, but only time will tell for sure.

Ultimately you're making a linguistic argument, not an ontological one. Man means something for you that it doesn't mean for a trans-man, right? When you say "you aren't a man", and he says "I am a man", you aren't actually disagreeing. You're equivocating on the word "man". For him, the definition is mostly social, and for you it's mostly genetics and genital-shape.

I disagree, I think I'm taking both linguistic, and ontological stances about physiology, neurology and psychology at odds with the stances much or most of the trans community is taking.

On that note, as an aside, it's interesting that you keep using "doctor" and "lawyer" as inviolable, when those words too have drifted over time. Not too long ago (and in many places even now), both words had the necessary implication of maleness, and a woman who said she wanted to be a doctor or lawyer might have been accused of "fantasy role play taken to ridiculous, unprecedented lengths".

Just because we've made mistakes with language in the past, or rather, we've gradually, reasonably updated language in light of new social realities that were impossible before the 20th century and the advent of birth control, home appliances, mass production and the overpopulation crisis, doesn't mean we ought to obscure language more than it already is.

Lots of gender studies professors have tried, but that's not really how language works. Some cultures do have alternative words; Thai has several. And arguably "trans-man" and "trans-woman" are already there in English.

It is how language works, 2 3rds of the English language was invented by linguists borrowing from French, Latin and Greek, and from combining and recombining existing words to make new ones.And we have two perfectly good ones, trans-man and trans-woman, but trans still insists on ruining two perfectly good ones, man and woman, because what trans wants, trans gets, it's their world now, we're just guests.

But I think just saying "man" instead of "trans-man" is legitimate, where 1) the distinction is irrelevant in most social interactions, and 2) we live in a society where random internet people go on unprovoked rants about how readily that will violently attack people who mislead them about the shape of their genitals.

If misleading people about their genitals, is something that causes many people a great deal of discomfort, distress and disgust, so much so that some of them may act out violently, why do it?Why not just say to someone before you sleep with them: oh by the way, I don't actually have the genitals I appear to?Why is that so difficult?You should be open and honest about issues that may come up in the bedroom with your partner, especially deal-breakers like having the opposite anatomy of what you've presented yourself to have.

It's like the trans community as a whole just don't care.They don't care about the existing cultural or 'cis gender' norms, they only care about their need to feel comfortable, they have absolutely no regard for anyone else's.They think the 99.5%, and all of reality should just rotate around the whims of the .5%.That's never how it's going to work.

It's like if I went to a place that presented itself to be a steakhouse, that was actually a vegetarian restaurant, I'd be pretty pissed off too.No, dude, we don't actually sell meat here, we just enjoy having the, appearance of restaurants that sell meat.Whooooooa, dude...far out.But dude, won't people be like...pissed off???Dude, we don't care, we refuse to compromise who we are....dude.

I think it's rather that some part of who they are is defined by who they choose to be.

You keep talking about "delusion", but consider what I said above about equivocation. Drill down into what that alleged delusion entails. A transman says he's a man, you say he isn't. You say, "But you have XX chromosomes." He says yes. You say, "But you have a womb and a vagina and can get pregnant." He says yes. You say, "So you're a woman!" He says no. He says, "But I have a beard." You say yes. He says, "But I wear cargo pants and that mom got uncomfortable when I smiled at her kid." You say yes. He says, "So I'm a man!" You say no.

There's no delusion in this exchange, he's just using the word to point to a different concept.

If you think having XX/XY chromosomes, tits/balls and a V/P is all there is to being an actual woman/man, or mostly what there is...than I rest my case.There is so much more to it than that, anatomically, neurologically and psychologically that trans doesn't have, and that trans never will have, for the reasons already given in this thread, and many more.

Well, I'm off to present myself as a homeless African American, lesbian war veteran from Florida, my chosen identity, I hope no one finds out who and what I actually am, but if and when they do, I'll just say, hey dumbasses, when I said I was X, I just meant X is my 'social role', not that I'm actually X, duh, it's totally irrelevant anyway!But they better continue to refer to and think of me as X, or else, because just saying I want to be thought of and treated as X, makes me practically and for almost all intents and purposes X!And when they give me money because they feel sorry for me, well I get to keep it, not my problem!

I'm understanding trans more and more.Many or most trans don't want people to know their actual sex, because if they did, many or most people wouldn't treat them like their coveted sex, which's what trans wants.For trans, being treated like their coveted sex, makes them feel more like their coveted sex, which's their ultimate objective.This's why they refuse to be called by their actual sex, why they don't even really want to be called transwomen, transmen or androgynes, even tho they're more accurate names for them.So we're rewriting the rules of language and socializing to make a tiny minority of mentally ill people more comfortable, and they are mentally ill (fauxsexuals), if they believe they're wholly neuropsychologically the opposite sex, because they're not, if they lie about their actual sex, if their gender dysphoria causes them a great deal of anxiety and depression, or if they go to desperate lengths risking life and limb to look and feel more like the opposite sex, because they can't accept who and what they are.Minorities are now being financially compensated at our expense and rewriting conventions customs to suit themAnd in all likelihood it's only going to get worse from here on.

Gloominary wrote:Many or most trans don't want people to know their actual sex, because if they did, many or most people wouldn't treat them like their coveted sex, which's what trans wants.For trans, being treated like their coveted sex, makes them feel more like their coveted sex, which's their ultimate objective.

Where I live, I have had many effeminate males smiling at me and eyeing me up, but their slim frame and wide hip belied their true-born gender, and nothing progressed beyond that first glance. They had wider hips than me, and they want me to play the subservient female role? Really!

Some don't mind faux, but the many do, so how would and does this pan out in court?

Gloominary wrote:Many or most trans don't want people to know their actual sex, because if they did, many or most people wouldn't treat them like their coveted sex, which's what trans wants.For trans, being treated like their coveted sex, makes them feel more like their coveted sex, which's their ultimate objective.

Where I live, I have had many effeminate males smiling at me and eyeing me up, but their slim frame and wide hip belied their true-born gender, and nothing progressed beyond that first glance. They had wider hips than me, and they want me to play the subservient female role? Really!

Some don't mind faux, but the many do, so how would and does this pan out in court?

I don't have a problem with transmen, transwomen, the people who are, and aren't attracted to them, it's the deception, and insisting we must refer to, think of and treat them as their coveted sex, I have a problem with.

I went and watched the full Dr. Drew's show segment...feelings over reality. Ben Shapiro was spot on. Talk about liberal hate in general and specifically a threat of placing Ben in an ambulance...definitely a female thing done by Zoey the trans-woman. Women often threaten to put men in ambulances since it would be a cinch to do with their buffness.

I AM OFFICIALLY IN HELL!

I live my philosophy, it's personal to me and people who engage where I live establish an unspoken dynamic, a relationship of sorts, with me and my philosophy.

Cutting folks for sport is a reality for the poor in spirit. I myself only cut the poor in spirit on Tues., Thurs., and every other Sat.

A Shieldmaiden wrote:As far as I am concerned [intersubjective reality] equates to wishful thinking and that does not determine the truth

As a matter of ontology, on some topics it does. I can appreciate the position that sex, even social sex, is not one of those things (though I disagree with it), but denying the existence of intersubjective reality is not tenable.

Take language. We here are using words that have a roughly shared meaning. You can do empirical tests about what a word means, e.g. by telling a bunch of test subjects that the box on the right has some object they value and the box on the left has nothing and asking them to pick whichever box they want. If they consistently pick the box on the right, we've established an objective truth about the meaning of the words "the box on the right". But that meaning is just a matter of agreement between people. It's true, objectively true, solely by virtue of the fact that people agree about it.

Other intersubjective realities are political facts like laws and national borders, religious facts like "the Pope is the head of the Catholic church" and "the New Testament is the holy book of Christianity", and economic facts like "a bitcoin costs more than $6000". These claims are true, predictions we make about them will reveal that they have an objective reality, but nonetheless that reality is entirely dependent on what people believe. When people stopped believing that "bitcoin is worth more than $12000", bitcoin stopped being worth more than $12000.

I'd argue that the social aspects of sex are like this. Someone is a woman in social situations if we all agree that they are a woman in social situations. If everyone in a room were independently asked to divide the room into men and women, and everyone put the transwoman in the women column, then she is a woman. That does break some implications from the statement "X is a woman", e.g. that it entails "X has XX chromosomes", but those claims are conceptually distinct and there's no necessary implication. It isn't the case that only those people who have XX chromosomes are considered to be women in social situations.

Gloominary wrote:When, whatever you want to call them, social constructs are used affectively, they help put us more in tune with both ourselves, and nature, with both our needs, and how to satisfy them, but when they're used ineffectively, as is the case with trans, they obscure them.

Where you make inferences from calling someone a "man", you will often make more accurate inferences when you call trans men "men" than when you call them "women", particularly when you weight inferences by relevance. That means calling transmen "men" is more effective than calling them "women".

Gloominary wrote:I'm making an inference, I'm using what I'm sure of

But you're also admitting that you have no knowledge from which to derive your certainty.

Gloominary wrote:But did most civilizations throughout history refer to and mostly think of trans as the opposite sex, or did they invent new linguistic and conceptual categories for them?

I'm not sure of the ratio, but there's clear evidence of cultures that have taken either approach (sometimes simultaneously). This again undermines any claim to necessary implication being a historical universal.

Gloominary wrote:I'm trying to be fair, I'm acknowledging that men and women can have physical, neurological and psychological secondary sex characteristics that don't align with their genitals and chromosomes

I appreciate this. But you're simultaneously saying that despite all the ways in which someone born with a penis can have other characteristically female traits, the only characteristic we should consider is genital shape. That's a weird thing to do in situations where other sex characteristics are much more salient and relevant. Why should generally inaccessible information be preferred over accessible information in contexts where the accessible information is more relevant anyway? (and to return your tone of good faith, I acknowledge that genital shape is more relevant in the context of gendered bathrooms, but I still don't find it compelling)

Gloominary wrote:It is how language works, 2 3rds of the English language was invented by linguists borrowing from French, Latin and Greek, and from combining and recombining existing words to make new ones.

A bit aside, but: loan words are, for the most part, not brought in by linguists but by immigration and second languages. "Shenanigans" came out of the north east not because of Harvard linguists, but because of a dense population of 1st and 2nd generation Irish Americans who grew up hearing their parents and grand parents using a word from their ancestral language with no adequate equivalent in English. No one said, "let's make 'Shenanigans' a thing", they just used a word that was already in their vocabulary, and continued using it when they adopted a second language.

In the domain people have been trying for a generation at least to introduce e.g. a gender neutral pronoun into English (ey, xe, ze, etc.). But instead, despite few people explicitly advocating for it and plenty of misguided pedants resisting it, "they" is becoming the accepted third person singular generic pronoun.

New words are coined for new concepts, or for concepts that don't have good words yet, but more often (and particularly where we're borrowing from another language, it's a lot more likely to be organic use by polyglots and cultural transplants.

Gloominary wrote:Why not just say to someone before you sleep with them: oh by the way, I don't actually have the genitals I appear to?

I am pretty sure that almost all transsexuals do in fact do this.

Gloominary wrote:There is so much more to it than that, anatomically, neurologically and psychologically that trans doesn't have, and that trans never will have, for the reasons already given in this thread, and many more.

I think you're overestimating this set of things. Look at the wiki article for causes of transsexuality, particularly the sections on brain structure and brain function. The neurological and psychological parts of transsexuals are in many ways closer to the sex they choose than the sex as determined by their genitals or chromosomes.

Gloominary wrote:Well, I'm off to present myself as...

Let me use an analogy to show you the mistake I think you're making. If I present myself as a Muslim, that does not in itself make me a Muslim. It's possible to lie about being a Muslim, in the same way that you would be lying if you intended someone to believe your string of adjectives. Nonetheless, if I sincerely believe myself to be a Muslim, that is sufficient to make me a Muslim.

You're offering as a reductio something that transsexuals aren't doing and no one is defending here, so it doesn't work as a reductio.

MagsJ wrote:Would that hold up in any court case, even? assault by balloon?

Who's talking about assault? I thought we were just trading tales of unjustified fears.

WendyDarling wrote:I went and watched the full Dr. Drew's show segment...feelings over reality. Ben Shapiro was spot on. Talk about liberal hate in general and specifically a threat of placing Ben in an ambulance...definitely a female thing done by Zoey the trans-woman. Women often threaten to put men in ambulances since it would be a cinch to do with their buffness.

exactly, just the fact that men have stronger bodies, means they can be more brash and aggressive, never mind the thousands of other ways men differ from women neurophysiologically.It makes no sense to treat a man mostly like a woman or vice versa, physically, and mentally, altho I am acknowledging men can occasionally have some feminine traits that aren't just an act and vice versa.

Yea, only conservatives are hateful, right?Pffft

I haven't actually seen the whole interview, going to look for it.

Last edited by Gloominary on Sat Aug 25, 2018 2:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

When transgender women go to straight, hetro clubs to pretend that they are really women, some transwomen are petite with fairly feminine features who fool most when they are glammed up, but at no time during their flirting do they confess that they are transwomen. The very fact that they are in a straight club is to fool the straight men into thinking they are legitimately females inside and out which is as Gloominary said to feel more like what they covet which is womanhood. I haven't heard anything recently in the news about transwomen getting beaten up or killed (tried to google it but not one article surfaced), but it happened quite a bit in the '80s and '90s. Trans people play a very dangerous game when they are not honest from the get-go.

Last edited by WendyDarling on Sat Aug 25, 2018 2:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

I AM OFFICIALLY IN HELL!

I live my philosophy, it's personal to me and people who engage where I live establish an unspoken dynamic, a relationship of sorts, with me and my philosophy.

Cutting folks for sport is a reality for the poor in spirit. I myself only cut the poor in spirit on Tues., Thurs., and every other Sat.

I've got one for you: how many generations back before you get to your first black ancestor?

Gloominary wrote:I am acknowledging men can occasionally have some feminine traits that aren't just an act and vice versa.

Ok, so take all such traits a biological man can have, and imagine an outlier who has all of them to an extreme degree, such that the only traits that aren't feminine are 1) chromosomes, and 2) genital shape. In a social situation that doesn't involve chromosomes or genitals, why shouldn't that person be treated as a woman? By hypothesis, everything that matters about gender in that context is feminine. Social expectations and intuitions around that interaction will be more accurate if the mental model we use there is "woman" rather than "man".

WendyDarling wrote:Trans people play a very dangerous game when they are not honest from the get-go.

Let's ignore for the time being that by your own admission you're unable to actually find an example of what you're describing, and just assume that it happens. What is the syllogism you're plugging this into? Sometimes transwomen who go to bars and pick up men get assaulted, therefor...? I don't see what part of your position follows from that claim (which, not for nothing, you have admitted to being unable to substantiate).

MagsJ wrote:Would that hold up in any court case, even? assault by balloon?

Who's talking about assault? I thought we were just trading tales of unjustified fears.

Are fears ever unjustifiable? otherwise what purpose would they be, and why would we even possess them in the first place?

..a pattern of criminal activity is obviously a pattern not to be ignored, no? and such predatory patterns have to be accounted for in amendments to laws, in order to safeguard the security of females in public places and spaces, in the same way that transsexual and vulnerable males have to be safeguarded within the prison system.

MagsJ wrote:Are fears ever unjustifiable? .....a pattern of criminal activity is obviously a pattern not to be ignored

Fears are frequently unjustified (not sure that's the same as unjustifiable). See, for example, the fear of balloons.

In this case, they're unjustified because they're based on the belief that there is a pattern of criminal activity which we don't have any evidence of. If there were a pattern of criminal activity, and if the law proposed were effective at curtailing that criminal behavior without causing more harm than it prevents, then such a law is appropriate. But (1) there is no such pattern of criminal behavior, there's only unjustified fear, and (2) in the absence of a harm to be prevented, any law is likely to cause much more harm than it prevents.